Or he was about to use the other tonfa to block another Drake attack because if you remember, Drake has two weapons as well and he was attacking Apoo at that moment.
It means precisely that because of the situation Apoo was. He was dealing with another guy with his rank in CQC while him not being a CQC specialist and the other guy was, and despite that he could lift his tonfa and try to block Zoro (in case this happened) despite even not seeing him at all (no drawing of his face reacting/noticing Zoro at all).
Killer was blocking all of Zoro's attack until he lost himself a scythe, "gave" the scythe to Zoro who increased his weapons and could do a stronger attack to a Killer with only one weapon left. You don't know what would happen if Killer had two weapons and that moment against three of Zoro. What you might think is headcanon.
You're wrong. Being fast enough to block an attack does not equal to being fast enough to evade an attack. Those are two completely different movements. Blocking is much easier because you're moving less mass.
You keep saying cqc specialist like Apoo doesn't specialize in cqc blocking. The fact he was able to block all of Zoro/Drake attacks up to time including a black blade from Zoro tells us he's specialize in cqc, it's just limited to blocking. That's his own shortcomings he's not a skilled all versatile in cqc as Zoro/Drake.
The fact Apoo was able to raise his tonfa, that was cut in half, proves he was able to react to the attack, if only a little. We don't need more seen showing that.
To get to the point of making, Oda is showing us even if it would have been just him and Zoro the outcome would have been the same. Not only can we compare Zoro movement and attack speed to Apoo but also Drake. Who was completely shocked by Zoro's speed. Zoro blitz by Drake.
Killer situation it's not that different because there we have another character who was able to handle and/or deal with Zoro's speed/power while Zoro was fighting at a lower level but couldn't handle his higher level speed/power.
It didn't matter how many weapons Killer had because Zoro completely blitzed him. Killer was not fast enough to block, evade, counter or hit Zoro before he was hit. Killer's scythe was not destroyed during the attack.
Your mistake is you still don't understand Zoro's fighting style. He starts off his fights on a low level and only increases if necessary. He doesn't use more energy than required to beat his opponent. That's why we have seen in almost every single one of Zoro's major battles post time skip his opponents go from fighting with him on equal or near equal level to being destroyed in one attack.
Hopefully with his upcoming battle against King/Queen we will see a character push him.